Why fly the centre line?
Following on from the other thread about the recent, sad, incident at Kemble, I have often wondered why we are taught to follow the centre line on climb out.
I am not familiar with Kemble, but assume that the pilot had no suitable EFATO options ahead, so he turned around.
If you are on the centre line, just over the hedge, with 2000m of runway behind you, its a sorely tempting option. At 300ft, you may feel that you could make it. If you are on the centre line, you need four turns. LLLR or RRRL. In each you will lose at least 75ft, with no engine. Smoothing all of these into a constant turn won't really help as you will trade speed for height and the final turn(s) will result in a stall/spin.
But why don't we climb out on a vector away from the centre line?
An engine failure on the hedge, at 300ft, 100m to the left or right of the centre line means two turns could, potentially, have us back in safely.
It seems that we are flying on the principle that the engine never stops and this teaching is killing us.
I am very interested in peoples views.